Researchers from the University of Edinburgh Business School are studying how early school closures on Fridays affect working parents and small businesses across the city.

In most parts of Edinburgh, schools finish around midday on Fridays. The idea for the study came from conversations with local mothers, many of whom had cut back their working hours to manage childcare. Businesses also said they struggled to maintain normal operations on Friday afternoons due to staff shortages.

The project brings together three academics with complementary expertise. Dr Agnessa Spanellis works on new ways to involve communities in policymaking, including through games and creative methods. This project allowed her to design and test a new tool to help people share their experiences. Dr Debora Gottardello studies how structural inequalities affect people’s working lives and has helped frame the school schedule as a policy issue with uneven impacts, particularly on caregivers. Dr Augusto Rocha researches how social and financial networks shape the success of local business ecosystems, bringing insight into how small and medium-sized enterprises are affected.

Dr Spanellis has developed a card-based game that helps participants discuss how school schedules affect their work, wellbeing and family life. The team is running group sessions alongside a short survey and will analyse the results to understand how impacts vary across gender, income, ethnicity, migration status and other factors.

Early findings suggest wide-ranging consequences, including reduced career progression, added stress and pressure on business performance. Many parents say the shift back to full-time office work after the pandemic has made the situation more difficult.

We started this project because people told us they were struggling but didn’t have the evidence to speak up. What looks like a simple timetable decision has ripple effects across families and workplaces. The game is our way of creating space for honest conversations, bringing lived experience into policy thinking and showing how these issues are connected. It’s about helping people be heard.

Dr Agnessa Spanellis

The team hopes its findings will inform policy discussions on education, care, work, and equality at the city council and in the Scottish Parliament.

Get involved

If you’re a parent of a school-age child or a business owner or manager in Edinburgh affected by half-day Fridays, share your experience here.